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In a horrible excuse of moderation, to save space, I have combined FAQ & Macros. One of the 3 mage mods will keep this updated. Love, Akraen:

This FAQ made by me and Oltier intends to answer some commonly occurring questions. If anything is unclear, inaccurate or if you feel a question should be added then please tell us. All information here is correct, though at times simplified for clarity.

You can achieve almost the same numbers with all three specs. However, as a Fire mage under 40% crit chance, you might not get the numbers you would expect. Keep in mind that while gear matters, correct gameplay is a very important factor. If your numbers are low, post some logs with a request for help rather than respeccing immediately.

Why should I use orange gems instead of pure intellect gems?

Because 2 secondary stat points are stronger than 1 intellect stat point, and gems give twice as many secondary stat points than they give primary stat points. However, you do not want to break socket bonuses, that is why you will gem orange in red sockets.

Why do you put expertise gems in your gem slots?

As mentioned above, gems give 2 secondary stat points, and expertise counts towards hit rating for casters, so you are actually gemming hit. This means that you can then reforge hit away on your equipment, to a different secondary stat, making the orange gem worth more points because you don't "waste" budget on intellect.

How much DPS should I do with 5xx item level?

That is a difficult question to answer, because item level does not accurately predict your potential DPS, for not item slots are not equally powerful. For example: you have 570 item level, but your trinkets and weapon come from raid finder; your DPS will be a lot lower than you would suspect.

If you feel that you are underperforming then the culprit is primarily bad gameplay. In this case, if you send us a link to your armory and a warcraftlogs.com log from one of your Malkorok kills, we will be more than happy to have a look at it and give you some pointers.

How much haste should I have if I have PBoI?

Purified Bindings of Immerseus adds a passive amount of haste rating based on the rest of your equipment(Unequip PBoI, your haste rating will drop), so you do not have to worry about haste.

Frost: capture Icy Veins and your strongest trinkets and buffs, let it run its full course.

Fire: Use Alter time to save a Heating up proc and a Pyroblast! proc together with your strongest int procs(both trinkets ideally) and Presence of Mind. Sidestep and spam pyroblasts, manually reset alter time when you run out and spam pyroblasts again, press Combustion before the presence of mind pyroblast hits.

Arcane: Once you are at 4 stacks with both your trinkets up, activate your mana gem to get to full mana, active Arcane Power and then activate Alter Time. Cast your missiles accompanied with arcane blast, shoot Arcane Barrage before AT ends.

What trinkets should I use?

Purified Bindings of Immerseus is a definite must for any specializations.

Your other trinket choice depends on the item level and spec. For fire, if Black Blood of Yshaarj is the same or a higher ilvl than your other trinket, equip it. For frost and arcane, if the item level of your Kardris Toxic Totem is the same or higher than your other trinket, equip it.

Of course, there are no clear-cut winners here, and every build with its own theorycrafting might suggest a different 2nd trinket, so it is possible that you'll read that somewhere. As a rule of thumb though, this is correct.

For tracking buffs we suggest either TellMeWhen or Weakauras. Both addons are very easy to configure and very powerful, their functions range from basic buff/cooldown tracking to advanced events and conditions.

For multidotting you can either opt to go for TidyPlates and multidot using plates, or use ForteXorcist or MageBombTracker to multidot using a list of targets. Keep in mind that you will always need to apply your mage bomb first using the latter 2 addons. You can also configure your boss frames for bosses such as The Fallen Protectors.

All three builds mentioned in Akraen's guide are completely viable in all situations. Although on some fights one will pull ahead, on other fights, the other build will be better. This is all explained in Akraen's Frost Mage guide here: http://www.icy-veins...t-pve-advanced/

What I can suggest you is: try out all of them and play the one you like the most.

What is 14242 haste in Mixture build? What is the next break point?

14242 is the 50% haste rating, with Frost Armor and raid haste buff. This is basically the GCD cap for frost mages. If you choose the mixture build, you should stop at this rating and start stacking mastery.

If you go for the Haste build, then there is no "next break point". In that build, you just keep stacking haste.

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Your macro is very redundant. Remember that harm implies exists, and harm implies nohelp. In fact, I think just this would do the exact same thing:

#showtooltip Mage Bomb

/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] Mage Bomb; Mage Bomb

You are right on the exists part, I am not sure of the nohelp part since it does not technically imply it, but it can be seen as the opposite I suppose. Redundancy in short macros is not necessarily a bad thing but I'll put the shorter version in.

Edit: was that macro in his post initially? Because we totally wasted time in that case :D

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Dont know if its the right place to post my question but Ill give it a try.

When i check my logs I always see myself missing brain freeze procs although i am using it asap. My question is : would it be beneficial to use a macro like

/stop casting

/cast FFB

That way i couldnt possibly be missing a proc.The way im doing right now is that when a BF procs i am currently casting a frostbolt and sometimes i just "queued" one so im like damn should I cancel and use FFB instead?

Dont remember reading anything on the subject so maybe my question is dumb and simple but I hate seeing 33 frozen thoughts with 40 brain freeze in my logs...

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This FAQ made by me and Oltier intends to answer some commonly occurring questions. If anything is unclear, inaccurate or if you feel a question should be added then please tell us. All information here is correct, though at times simplified for clarity.

You can achieve almost the same numbers with all three specs. However, as a Fire mage under 40% crit chance, you might not get the numbers you would expect. Keep in mind that while gear matters, correct gameplay is a very important factor. If your numbers are low, post some logs with a request for help rather than respeccing immediately.

Why should I use orange gems instead of pure intellect gems?

Because 2 secondary stat points are stronger than 1 intellect stat point, and gems give twice as many secondary stat points than they give primary stat points. However, you do not want to break socket bonuses, that is why you will gem orange in red sockets.

Why do you put expertise gems in your gem slots?

As mentioned above, gems give 2 secondary stat points, and expertise counts towards hit rating for casters, so you are actually gemming hit. This means that you can then reforge hit away on your equipment, to a different secondary stat, making the orange gem worth more points because you don't "waste" budget on intellect.

How much DPS should I do with 5xx item level?

That is a difficult question to answer, because item level does not accurately predict your potential DPS, for not item slots are not equally powerful. For example: you have 570 item level, but your trinkets and weapon come from raid finder; your DPS will be a lot lower than you would suspect.

If you feel that you are underperforming then the culprit is primarily bad gameplay. In this case, if you send us a link to your armory and a warcraftlogs.com log from one of your Malkorok kills, we will be more than happy to have a look at it and give you some pointers.

How much haste should I have if I have PBoI?

Purified Bindings of Immerseus adds a passive amount of haste rating based on the rest of your equipment(Unequip PBoI, your haste rating will drop), so you do not have to worry about haste.

Frost: capture Icy Veins and your strongest trinkets and buffs, let it run its full course.

Fire: Use Alter time to save a Heating up proc and a Pyroblast! proc together with your strongest int procs(both trinkets ideally) and Presence of Mind. Sidestep and spam pyroblasts, manually reset alter time when you run out and spam pyroblasts again, press Combustion before the presence of mind pyroblast hits.

Arcane: Once you are at 4 stacks with both your trinkets up, activate your mana gem to get to full mana, active Arcane Power and then activate Alter Time. Cast your missiles accompanied with arcane blast, shoot Arcane Barrage before AT ends.

What trinkets should I use?

Purified Bindings of Immerseus is a definite must for any specializations.

Your other trinket choice depends on the item level and spec. For fire, if Black Blood of Yshaarj is the same or a higher ilvl than your other trinket, equip it. For frost and arcane, if the item level of your Kardris Toxic Totem is the same or higher than your other trinket, equip it.

Of course, there are no clear-cut winners here, and every build with its own theorycrafting might suggest a different 2nd trinket, so it is possible that you'll read that somewhere. As a rule of thumb though, this is correct.

For tracking buffs we suggest either TellMeWhen or Weakauras. Both addons are very easy to configure and very powerful, their functions range from basic buff/cooldown tracking to advanced events and conditions.

For multidotting you can either opt to go for TidyPlates and multidot using plates, or use ForteXorcist or MageBombTracker to multidot using a list of targets. Keep in mind that you will always need to apply your mage bomb first using the latter 2 addons. You can also configure your boss frames for bosses such as The Fallen Protectors.

All three builds mentioned in Akraen's guide are completely viable in all situations. Although on some fights one will pull ahead, on other fights, the other build will be better. This is all explained in Akraen's Frost Mage guide here: http://www.icy-veins...t-pve-advanced/

What I can suggest you is: try out all of them and play the one you like the most.

What is 14242 haste in Mixture build? What is the next break point?

14242 is the 50% haste rating, with Frost Armor and raid haste buff. This is basically the GCD cap for frost mages. If you choose the mixture build, you should stop at this rating and start stacking mastery.

If you go for the Haste build, then there is no "next break point". In that build, you just keep stacking haste.

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Quick question regarding Arcane and Alter Time. Forgive me if i say something silly as i don't know that spec at all:

How does the Arcane Power/Alter Time interaction work? On the one hand, you would want to separate them, use AP on cd and Alter Time appropriately as things proc/stacks grow, like you would as Frost. On the other, by using them together you can also optimize the mana% at which you will Alter Time. Which one is optimal?

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Quick question regarding Arcane and Alter Time. Forgive me if i say something silly as i don't know that spec at all:

How does the Arcane Power/Alter Time interaction work? On the one hand, you would want to separate them, use AP on cd and Alter Time appropriately as things proc/stacks grow, like you would as Frost. On the other, by using them together you can also optimize the mana% at which you will Alter Time. Which one is optimal?

Use Arcane Power together with Bindings' proc. AP cooldown is 3 minutes. It lasts for 20 seconds, just like Bindings. Capture them together with AT.

If you screw up your mana before you AT, just use a mana gem? That's what they are there for.

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Quick question regarding Arcane and Alter Time. Forgive me if i say something silly as i don't know that spec at all:

How does the Arcane Power/Alter Time interaction work? On the one hand, you would want to separate them, use AP on cd and Alter Time appropriately as things proc/stacks grow, like you would as Frost. On the other, by using them together you can also optimize the mana% at which you will Alter Time. Which one is optimal?

You'll want to glyph AP and use them together. En the opener, wait for all trinkets, 2x AM and preferably full mana (mana gem otherwise) and use it then. At 3 minutes you want to try to do the same. If PBOI comes up soon (which it should roughlyt 20-30 seconds after AT comes off cd) you want to wait for that and go AP+AT again.